BOSTON — While Senate Democrats do not have much legislative action ready to launch in response to President Donald Trump, they spent more than two hours Monday ripping into the administration’s immigration crackdown and warning about damage to the rule of law.

Fourteen senators, all Democrats, used an informal session with no business on the agenda as the venue for lengthy speeches voicing concerns about the Trump administration’s efforts to detain and deport immigrants — including some with visas or other legal status, like Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk — and its resistance to court orders to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia back after his apparent mistaken deportation.

Senate President Karen Spilka, who rarely speaks during her chamber’s proceedings and almost never attends informal sessions like Monday’s, kicked off a series of dire warnings with a 20-minute speech in which she warned that “America is becoming unrecognizable” nearly 100 days into Trump’s presidency.

“As someone who lost family members to the Holocaust, I do not say this lightly, but what we are experiencing in America today is starting to feel like Europe in the 1930s,” Spilka said. “It’s not just terrifying. It is enraging.”

The Ashland Democrat recounted some family history, telling colleagues, attendees and anyone watching on the livestream about how her grandfather and his best friend attended a protest against the “oppressive policies of the czar” in Russia in 1906. A day later, Spilka said, her grandfather found “the body of that dear friend hanging in his village square,” and soon fled to the United States.

Spilka also said her father helped liberate the Buchenwald concentration camp during his military service in World War II, an experience she said “would haunt him for the rest of his life.”

“Hear me when I say this, and I say this from the bottom of my heart: as the granddaughter of an immigrant fleeing political persecution, as a descendent of those who stayed in Europe and were subsequently murdered by the Nazis, and as the daughter who lost her beloved father to the horrors of the war even though he came back and it happened years after he came back, I feel the danger of what is happening in America today deep in my bones,” Spilka said. “I’m sure many of you do, too. Like many of you, I watched in horror as the administration has kidnapped residents off the streets, off our streets, right here in Massachusetts.”

Two Republicans, Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr and Sen. Kelly Dooner, attended Monday’s session. Both joined the rest of the chamber in a standing ovation after Spilka’s speech, and neither offered remarks of their own.

Tarr did not respond to a State House News Service inquiry Monday afternoon.

Trump campaigned on pledges to take an aggressive approach toward illegal immigration and to pursue large-scale deportations. In December, as president-elect, he said his deportation efforts would prioritize those with criminal histories. But recent actions appear to have affected people with a variety of backgrounds, including Ozturk, whom supporters have contended has been targeted because of an op-ed she coauthored calling on Tufts to divest from companies with ties to Israel.

Spilka did not lay out much of a legislative agenda she would pursue based on her Trump concerns.

She said the Senate would “continue to embrace the principles and blueprint of our Response 2025 initiative to protect our residents, defend our values and help lead this great nation past this moment of grave danger.”

Spilka and top deputies launched their so-called Response 2025 program on April 1, when they said the Senate Committee on Steering and Policy would begin weighing responses to federal action.

Two weeks ago, Senate Democrats proposed legislation that would shield reproductive and transgender health care in Massachusetts from federal or out-of-state investigations. The measure (SD 2808) has not yet received a committee hearing or a vote. (The House still has not responded to the Senate’s push to refer the bill to the Health Care Financing Committee, a key procedural step before any hearing.)

“There are other things in the works, but I welcome and look forward to all of you as we take actions to protect, defend and lead,” Spilka told colleagues Monday.

Other senators who aired concerns about the Trump administration were Barry Finegold of Andover, Adam Gomez of Springfield, Sal DiDomenico of Everett, Robyn Kennedy of Worcester, Jason Lewis of Winchester, Pavel Payano of Lawrence, Lydia Edwards of Boston, John Keenan of Quincy, Patricia Jehlen of Somerville, Joan Lovely of Salem, Jacob Oliveira of Ludlow, Brendan Crighton of Lynn and Will Brownsberger of Belmont.

“I am scared. I am scared I don’t know what to do. I am scared I don’t know how to do it. I am scared that I could ruin my career. I am scared,” Edwards said. “And as my colleague said, if I am scared, God only knows what the children in my schools feel. So I say we come together, answer this call, and I assure each and every single one of my colleagues, ‘I have your back, and thank you so much for having mine.’”

Most Senate Democrats who spoke praised immigrants as playing a vital role in Massachusetts. Kennedy warned that hundreds of medical trials are at risk at UMass Chan Medical School in Worcester because of federal funding cuts. Keenan recounted John Adams’ work to represent British soldiers during the Boston Massacre trial as an example of honoring the rule of law. DiDomenico said he hopes that Trump himself hears what Massachusetts senators had to say.

“I actually hope that what’s happening today does reach the Oval Office. He’s so narcissistic that he will search the internet and he will find this session, potentially, and hear all of us speaking. I hope he does,” DiDomenico said. “We are not going to bend the knee. We are not giving in to the president. We are a democracy, and we want to fight back, pass legislation, do the right thing and speak up.”

Some Massachusetts senators said Monday they understand, and agree with, the need for immigration reform but feel Trump has gone too far.

“Of course we need an orderly process for managing immigration to this country,” said Lewis, who moved to the country from South Africa as a child. “I certainly understand why many Americans have concerns about immigration, given how broken our current system is and has been for a long time, but this is something we can and should fix in Congress.”

None of the Democrats called out members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation by name, though Spilka said “we must demand more from our elected representatives in Congress to act as the check on unfettered executive power that the Constitution demands of them, and then to pass meaningful immigration reform once this moment of very extreme danger has passed.”